Tyre Nichols: Bodycam footage shows father-of-one calling for his mother as he is beaten by officers before his death

Published

3 years ago

January 28, 2023

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Memphis Police has released bodycam footage showing the moment Tyre Nichols called for his mother as he was beaten by five officers before he died.

The footage shows police beating the 29-year-old for three minutes while screaming profanities at him throughout the attack.

Police have released four separate videos cut into one hour-long clip, including police bodycam footage and footage from a CCTV camera.

Mr Nichols can be heard screaming “mom, mom” several times as the beating unfolds.

He was 80 yards (73 metres) from his family home, according to his mother.

Warning: This article contains violent images

Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis asked for calm before the video footage was made public.

“I expect you to feel what the Nichols family feels,” she said. “I expect you to feel outrage in the disregard of basic human rights.”

Five sacked officers, who are all black, have been charged with second-degree murder and other crimes, including assault, kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression, over Mr Nichols’ death.

In the footage of the attack, one camera shows the initial police stop at an intersection in Memphis, Tennessee.

“I’m going to baton the f*** out of you,” one officer can be heard saying. His body camera shows him raise his baton while at least one other officer holds Mr Nichols.

After the first officer roughly pulls Mr Nichols out of his car just after 8:20pm on 7 January this year, the FedEx worker can be heard saying “I didn’t do anything” as a group of officers begins to wrestle him to the ground.

“Get on the ground!,” one officer yells, as another is heard shouting: “Tase him! Tase him!”

The father-of-one calmly replied soon after being wrestled to the pavement: “OK, I’m on the ground.”

Moments later, as the officers continue to shout, Mr Nichols says: “Man, I am on the ground.”

An officer yells: “Put your hands behind your back before I break your (expletive).”

Moments later an officer shouts: “Put your hands behind your back before I break them.”

“You guys are really doing a lot right now,” Mr Nichols says loudly to the officers. “I’m just trying to go home.”

“Stop, I’m not doing anything,” he yells moments later.

Pepper-sprayed and punched in face

The camera is briefly obscured and then Mr Nichols can be seen running as an officer fires a Taser at him. The officers then start chasing Mr Nichols.

He is then punched, kicked and hit with a baton. After the beating, officers mill about for several minutes while Mr Nichols lies propped up against the car, then slumps onto the street.

Emergency workers with what looks like medical equipment attend, but do not immediately intervene.

In footage from one of the cameras, Mr Nichols is heard shouting for his mother while police attack him.

Mr Nichols is then pepper-sprayed and punched in the face.

He died on 10 January, three days after the violent arrest.

The five officers who have been charged are named Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr, Emmitt Martin III, Tadarrius Bean and Justin Smith.

Martin’s lawyer, William Massey, and Mills’ lawyer, Blake Ballin, said their clients would plead not guilty. Lawyers for Smith, Bean and Haley could not be reached.

Officers were ‘ramped up’

Ms Davis said the officers were “already ramped up, at about a 10” during the initial stop.

She added the officers were “aggressive, loud, using profane language and probably scared Mr Nichols from the very beginning”.

The senior officer said: “We know something happened prior to this officer or these officers getting out of their vehicles… just knowing the nature of officers, it takes something to get them amped up, you know, like that. We don’t know what happened.

“All we know is the amount of force that was applied in this situation was over the top.”

Ms Davis also described the officers’ actions as “heinous, reckless and inhumane,” and said that her department has been unable to substantiate the reckless driving allegation that prompted the stop.

Tyre Nichols’ final words move us to ask important questions

Sometimes, there are no words.

Articulating the loss of a son can stretch the vocabulary in the best of times.

The family of Tyre Nichols find themselves in the absolute worst.

What words can convey how it feels to have a son, your son, battered to death on camera?

As hard as anyone tried at a news conference inside Mount Olive Cathedral in Memphis, maybe the job was done best by Tyre himself.

At the end of the video, he is heard to call out for his mother, three times.

They are his final words on footage that shows him becoming limp, unconscious and clearly in distress.

He was surrounded by police and other medical specialists who stood back rather than stepped in.

His final words were a plea to someone he knew would help, his mum, who lived three blocks from where he was beaten.

RowVaughn, Tyre’s mother, wasn’t aware of it until it emerged on the video. She only knows now because she’s been told – she can’t bring herself to watch the images.

“You have no clue how I feel,” she told a news conference when asked about her son calling out for her.

And, of course, we don’t.

But we are asked to consider how we would feel – by the sense of helplessness and lack of humanity aggravated by the desperate cry of a grown man to his mother.

It helps an audience empathise, as well as sympathise, and that’s important amidst the demands for change.

The case of Tyre Nichols moves us to ask important questions around police culture in the United States.

Demonstrations in wake of arrest footage

Protests are taking place in at least nine cities across the US – including Memphis – after the bodycam footage was released.

Mr Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, had earlier warned supporters of the “horrific” nature of the video but pleaded for peace saying “tearing up the streets” is “not what my son stood for”.

US President Joe Biden said he was “outraged and deeply pained to see the horrific video of the beating that resulted in Tyre Nichols’ death”

“It is yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that black and brown Americans experience every single day,” he added.

World

CCTV shows men in combat clothing shooting hospital volunteer at point-blank range in Syria

Published

8 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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CCTV shows men in combat clothing shooting hospital volunteer at point-blank range in Syria

Sky News has obtained shocking CCTV from inside the main hospital in the city of Sweida in southern Syria – where our team found more than 90 corpses laid out in the grounds following a week of intense fighting.

Warning this article shows images of a shooting

The CCTV images show men in army fatigues shooting dead a volunteer dressed in medical scrubs at point-blank range while a crowd of other terrified health workers are held at gunpoint with their hands in the air.

The mainly Druze city of Sweida was the scene of nearly a week of violent clashes, looting and executions last month which plunged the new authorities into their worst crisis since the toppling of the country’s former dictator Bashar al Assad.

The new Syrian government troops were accused of partaking in the atrocities they were sent in to quell between the Druze minority and the Arab Bedouin minority groups.

The government troops were forced to withdraw when Israeli jets entered the fray, saying they were protecting the Druze minority and bombed army targets in Sweida and the capital Damascus.

Days of bloodletting ensued, with multiple Arab tribes, Druze militia and armed gangs engaging in pitched battles and looting before a ceasefire was agreed.

The government troops then set up checkpoints and barricades encircling Sweida to prevent the Arab tribes re-entering.

The extrajudicial killing captured on CCTV inside the Sweida hospital is corroborated by eyewitnesses we spoke to who were among the group, as well as other medics in the hospital and a number of survivors and patients.

The CCTV is date- and time-stamped as mid-afternoon on 16 July and the different camera angles show the men (who tell the hospital workers they are government troops) marauding through the hospital; and in at least one case, smashing the CCTV cameras with the butt of a rifle.

One of the nurses present, who requested anonymity, told us: “They told us if we talked about the shooting or showed any film, we’d be killed too. I thought I was going to die.”

Dr Obeida Abu Fakher, a doctor who was in the operating section at the time, told us: “They told us they were the new Syrian army and interior police. We cannot have peace with these people. They are terrorists.”

Multiple patients and survivors told us when we visited the hospital last month that government troops had participated in the horror which swept through Sweida for days but this is the first visual evidence that some took part in atrocities inside the main hospital.

In other images, one of the men can be seen smashing the CCTV camera with the butt of his rifle – and another is wearing a black sweater which appears to be the uniform associated with the country’s interior security.

One survivor calling himself Mustafa Sehnawi, an American citizen from New Jersey, told us: “It’s the government who sent those troops, it’s the government of Syria who killed those people… we need help.”

The government responded with a statement from the interior ministry saying they would be investigating the incident which they “denounced and condemned” in the strongest terms.

The statement went on to promise all those involved would be “held accountable” and punished.

The new Syrian president Ahmed al Sharaa is due to attend the United Nations General Assembly next month in New York – the first time a Syrian leader has attended since 1967 – and what happened in Sweida is certain to be among the urgent topics of discussion.

World

Funeral held for five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Israeli strike in Gaza

Published

8 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Funeral held for five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Israeli strike in Gaza

A funeral was held for five Al Jazeera journalists who were targeted by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Sunday night, as the UN said the killings were a “grave breach of international law”.

Correspondents Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Moamen Aliwa, and their assistant Mohammed Noufal, died after a strike on a tent near Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

The Israeli military defended the attack, claiming the most prominent of the group, Sharif, was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell and only “posed as a journalist” – claims consistently denied by Sharif himself, Al Jazeera and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

A sixth journalist – a freelancer called Mohammad al Khaldi – was also killed in the strike, medics at the Al Shifa Hospital told Reuters.

Al Jazeera called the killing of its journalists a “targeted assassination” and described its employees as some of the “last remaining voices within Gaza”.

“Al Jazeera Media Network condemns in the strongest terms the targeted assassination of its correspondents… by the Israeli occupation forces in yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom,” the broadcaster said.

“This attack comes amid the catastrophic consequences of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has seen the relentless slaughter of civilians, forced starvation, and the obliteration of entire communities.

“The order to assassinate Anas Al-Sharif, one of Gaza’s bravest journalists, and his colleagues, is a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza.”

The United Nations (UN) secretary-general condemned the killing of the five journalists and called for it to be investigated.

A spokesperson said in a media briefing: “These latest killings highlight the extreme risks that journalists continue to face when covering this ongoing conflict.

“The secretary-general calls for an independent, impartial investigation into these latest killings.”

He added that “at least” 242 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began.

The UN’s human rights office condemned the killings earlier on Monday, labelling the strike by Israel a “grave breach of international humanitarian law”.

The war began on 7 October in 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel and killed 1,200 people, taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli numbers.

Of the 50 hostages still in Gaza, Israeli authorities say 20 are still alive.

Israel’s offensive has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in Hamas-run Gaza.

It comes as prominent journalists across media organisations continue to join calls for access to Gaza, which Israel has forbidden throughout the war.

On Sunday, Palestinian envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour said Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should let the UN Security Council into Gaza.

“Take journalists with you so that you can verify exactly what is happening in Gaza,” he said.

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Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

Published

17 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

The targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif and four other colleagues by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) late on Sunday silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza.

The IDF wasted no time in releasing a statement claiming it had “eliminated” Al-Sharif, calling him a “terrorist” who “posed” as a journalist for Al Jazeera.

Gaza latest: Follow live updates

The Committee to Protect Journalists warned in July that Al-Sharif was the victim of an Israeli smear campaign and that they feared for his safety.

The IDF had previously released documents which they say proved his involvement with Hamas.

No word from them on his colleagues – Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa – who they also killed. We are chasing.

Al-Sharif’s death – and that of his four colleagues – is a chilling message to the journalistic community both on the ground and elsewhere ahead of Israel’s impending push into Gaza City.

There will now be fewer journalists left to cover that story, and – if it is even possible – they will be that bit more fearful.

This is how journalists are silenced. Israel knows this full well.

It has also not allowed international journalists independent access to enter Gaza to report on the war.

Al-Sharif’s death has sent shockwaves across the region, where he was a household name. He was prolific on social media and had a huge following.

I was watching horrifying footage of the immediate aftermath of the strike in the taxi on my way into the bureau, and the driver told me how he and his family had all cried for Anas when the news came in.

His little daughter cried because of Al-Sharif’s little daughter, Sham, who she knew from social media.

“They call everyone Hamas,” my taxi driver said. “Men, women, children”.

Last month, Al-Sharif wrote this post: “I haven’t stopped covering [the crisis] for a moment in 21 months, and today I say it outright… and with indescribable pain.

“I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment… Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”

This is what journalists in Gaza are facing, every single day.